


You Broke Me.

by skeletonwrites



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-03 18:56:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17883410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeletonwrites/pseuds/skeletonwrites
Summary: Jude has a moment of vulnerability.





	You Broke Me.

  
It had been three years since her banishment, and two years since the banishment was lifted. Jude Duarte Greenbriar went back to Elfhame and took her previous rooms in the palace when the lifting occurred, generally staying as far away from Cardan as she could. They hardly spoke these days, they never shared a bed at night despite Cardan’s constant begging for her to come to his chambers. She’d made the mistake a handful of times of allowing him to pleasure her, to shut her mind off from the anger and constant pain she felt around him.

She hated him. Truly, deep in her soul, hated him. She hated the curls of his hair, how they fell into his eyes when he looked down at her. She hated the way his eyes glistened like wet tar, like the night sky full of stars. She hated his voice, the way he spoke. She hated that he couldn’t lie. She hated the way his mouth grazed her jaw, her ears, her throat. She hated how easy it was for him to get a reaction out of her, to get her to moan. She especially hated how clever his fingers, his tongue were, how they made her fracture beneath him. She hated how she had allowed him to deflower her. She hated his exiling, she hated that she had made him High King of Elfhame. But mostly she hated, with every fiber and atom of her being, that she had allowed him to become the High King of her heart.

Jude was tired, so incredibly, devastatingly tired. Tired the threats that had come her way since being announced as Queen, tired of watching Nicasia work so tirelessly to become Cardan’s consort. She was tired of sitting on a throne at revel after revel, watching Cardan drink himself into oblivion and then having to make sure someone escorted him back to his chambers, because she wouldn’t be the one to do it. Jude, it would seem, had finally had enough, as she pushed herself off her throne and made her way down the steps of the dais, ignoring all the faeries that bowed as she passed.

Pushing through the massive oak doors that led into the hall, Jude made her way to her chambers, the black and gray tulle of her gown floating behind her like thick smoke of a forest fire. She slipped into her room, moving to shut the door behind her when long, lithe fingers caught the door. Jude knew it was him before she even looked, could smell his scent – clean and crisp, with sandalwood and currently, the sickly sweet smell of wine on his breath – and she let him enter keeping her back to him as he shut the door behind him. With her head turned ever so slightly to give him a moment of attention, her gaze locked on the ornate rug on the floor, she braced her hands against her stomach, her fingers fiddling with the ring on her left hand.

“I’ve apologized time and time again, Jude,” he started, taking quiet steps toward her. Her body froze completely as his fingers brushed her hair over her right shoulder, then grazed along the bare skin of her neck and left shoulder, down her thin arm. When they met her palm, he took her hand and gently raised it to his lips, kissing her knuckles. “I am sorry. Tell me what I can do to make it go away.” She turned her face away from him, shuddering as his lips brushed the curve of her neck. She could feel the heat of his body radiating from where his chest nearly touched her back. Despite the warmth, she shivered, lifted her hand to wipe at the tears that she hadn’t realized she had shed. She was so, so tired.

“You…You broke me. You broke me, and all you can say is sorry?” She asked, turning around to face him fully. Her voice was unsteady and broken, hoarse and thick with emotion. Emotion that she never showed, never let Cardan see. Emotion that nobody, save for Vivi and Taryn, had ever seen. “You knew. You knew what sending me there would do. You knew what would happen when you brought me back here. You orchestrated it all. And you stand before me, every few weeks, begging for forgiveness, begging me to let you take me. Begging me to believe you when you say that you’re sorry. But you knew you were breaking me when you sent me there, and saying sorry doesn’t just make it go away, Cardan.”

“Jude-“

“I am so tired, Cardan. I am so tired of having no place in the world. I don’t belong in the mortal realms, I don’t belong in Faerie, I-“

“You belong with me, Jude,” he said, his voice low and rough. He took her face in his hands, fingers brushing along her cheekbones, her jaw, her lips. They wiped away the tears that grazed her skin, the tips of his long fingers tangling in her hair as he held her face. Jude tried to turn away, but Cardan was tired of that – of Jude not letting him be her husband, of Jude not letting him care for her, Jude not letting him hold her. He gripped her chin tightly, forcing her to look at him. Gods, she could see her reflection in his black eyes, could see so much emotion beneath a thick layer of lashes. “I love you.”

At those words, her heart stopped and fluttered and raged all at once. A confession that neither had ever dared to utter, a confession that had flowers blooming from the ceiling of her room. Vines poured down from the ceiling, stopping just above the top of Cardan’s head, the soft petals of flowers curling from long stems. When Jude looked up, it was as though the most beautiful of garden’s had been planted on her ceiling, as though the stars themselves had been replaced with the blooms of every color. She closed her eyes and breathed in the smell of lavender, of jasmine, of rose. Hydrangeas and peonies and roses among every flower she’d ever seen curled from above, a garden fit for a queen. Tendrils of wisteria hung low, the petals falling onto her cheeks, into her hair. A garden grown for a queen, by her High King.

“I love you,” he said again, brushing his lips along her cheeks, her lips. “Telling you that I’m sorry may never be enough, but I will spend every day growing you gardens, so that every petal will represent an apology, a litany of my love for you. Every stem, every leaf, every thorn, is my soul laid bare.” His lips brushed her eyelids, her nose, her upper then lower lip, between each word. He kissed a freshly fallen tear from beneath one eye, then the other, his lips glistening with her emotion. “I will spend my eternity proving it to you, my love.”

Jude Duarte was tired. So tired, of pretending, of denying herself, of being hell-bent to be miserable apart from Cardan. So instead of arguing, instead of fighting, she tilted her head back and kissed him, her fingers tangled in his hair.

“I love you,” she breathed, and all throughout Elfhame, the most beautiful and lush of gardens exploded from the earth.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [My Tumblr!](http://Www.highqueenofelfhame.tumblr.com)


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